Timshel

by Lillian Turner

  Thick gardens surrounded the main house and several outlying structures, overflowing with bean trellises and cornrows. Charon and Eiland had to pick their way through, zigzagging among the plant life. Distantly Eiland could hear the clucking and lowing of animals.

  It wasn’t until Eiland’s foot caught on something and a bell jangled inside the manor house that he realized the mazelike quality of the garden was deliberate.

  “It’s all right,” Charon reassured him just as the front door to the house opened, and a short, brown-haired woman came out.

  She carried a club in her hands, but when she saw Charon she gave a cry and sprang down the steps to wrap her arm tight around his neck.

  Charon gripped the back of the woman’s shirt in fists. Eiland stared.

  “We’d begun to worry.” The woman stepped back to search Charon’s face. “Crickets, you look awful. Oh and you’ve brought—” She cut off as she looked closer at Eiland.

  “Mara?” said a man’s voice from just inside the door. “Is that Charon?”

  “Yes,” the woman, Mara, replied over her shoulder while still looking back and forth between Charon and Eiland. “He’s got someone with him, but I think all’s well.”

  A man’s head poked around the edge of the doorframe and the rest of him quickly followed. Eiland started a little: he was tall and slim, and his eyes shone clear and bright.

  Yet his skin bore the crisscrossing scars of a Cursed one.

  The man stared back at Eiland for a moment before coming down the stairs. He moved with an ease Charon did not have, had never had, but his palm felt unmistakably rough and brittle when he touched Eiland’s hand in greeting.

  “Hello,” the man said. “I’m Sierrach.”

  Eiland squeezed his hand automatically. “I’m Eiland of—” He caught himself then straightened. “I’m Eiland of Summerton.”

  Sierrach frowned then looked to Charon again. Whatever he saw there made his expression darken and his fingers tighten a little around Eiland’s.

  Mara stepped closer, covering the awkward silence with a smile. “Won’t you come inside, Eiland? When did you last eat?”

  Eiland couldn’t make any sense of Charon’s blank expression or Sierrach’s furrowed brow, so instead he let Mara pull him into the house. The front parlor and kitchen were warm and sun-dappled, the floors scrubbed and strewn about with fresh rushes. Various herbs hung from the walls of the kitchen, and cut flowers poked their heads out of bowls on the windowsills. Still, Eiland could see through doorways into other rooms that stood dusty and neglected.

  Outside, Sierrach and Charon spoke in low voices. “Won’t you have some bread,” Mara offered, casting Eiland a quick glance.

  A month ago Eiland would never have dreamed of breaking bread in the house of a Cursed one, but after sharing so many meals with Charon in the wilderness, he didn’t hesitate to devour anything Mara put in front of him.

  As they ate Mara inquired after their journey and about Summerton. When Eiland asked where she was from her expression turned wistful. “Sierrach and I come from Sustantivo. We have not been of Sustantivo in a very long time.”

  She addressed the last sentence to the doorway, where Sierrach and Charon had entered. Sierrach smiled but Charon appeared withdrawn and pale, his mouth tight.

  “Good old Sustantivo,” Sierrach said in a way that undid the endearment.

  “How did you come to be here?”

  One of Mara’s hands spread out across the surface of the table, palm down. “A woman came to our village. She told us that unless we gave her all the gold we had, every last coin, she would Curse all the young men in the village.”

  Sierrach crossed from the threshold to stand behind Mara’s chair. A scar ran across his chin. Mara didn’t turn to look at him, just smiled small and shaky at Eiland. “She got halfway through them all before they managed to kill her.”

  “Some of us stayed, afterward,” Sierrach put in, his voice low. “There were enough that had been Cursed, we thought maybe it wouldn’t be so strange. But it was. So my lady and I—” He wound his fingers in Mara’s hair, and she tilted her head far back. They smiled at one another. “We left together and found this house. We think it belonged to some dead noble. There are a prodigious number of graves out back…it certainly lent the place a welcoming air.”

  Mara laughed, her solemnity evaporating. The sound was so unexpectedly light and sweet that Eiland couldn’t help smiling too.

  Only Charon, standing against the wall of the room, did not join in. Instead he interjected, “Eiland has a salve. It helps the skin lesions. And a draught, that prevents them altogether. I brought him here,” and he fixed Sierrach with a strangely defiant glare, which Sierrach met blankly, “so he could show it to you, and teach Mara how to make it, too.”

  “Oh, truly?” Mara asked Eiland, her expression uncertain but hopeful.

  “It’s just a few herbs and roots mixed with flour. My father is a healer, and he taught me how. Or, well, he taught my older brother, and I learned on my own.”

  “That’s not true,” Charon countered. “You improved it, in the forest. I could tell. And the draught, that was your own. You’ve done more good than anything else ever has.”

  The sincerity in his voice and eyes made Eiland stare until Mara rose from the table, announcing, “Well, we certainly won’t be doing any potion-making tonight. You two look fair exhausted. Sierrach, could you start turning out Charon’s room? Eiland, most of the beds in this great fool castle are filled up with dust and spiders. Would you mind sharing with Charon?”

  Eiland didn’t miss the way she asked him, or how Sierrach paused in the doorway to hear his response. “I don’t mind,” he answered, conscious of Charon watching him.

  While Sierrach turned out their room, Mara shooed Eiland and Charon upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Sierrach. If the house was fit for a lord, the bedroom belonged to a king: it had shutters on either side to let in the light, and bed curtains built into the ceiling.

  He and Charon took turns washing up in the small serving room to one side. An old mirror hung above the basin, and Eiland stared at his warped reflection for a long time. His skin was brown, his hair long and falling in his face. He barely recognized himself.

  When he finally walked back into the bedroom Charon was stretched out face down on the large bed. He’d stripped to his breeches and the sight of his naked back made Eiland stop in the doorway.

  Golden sunlight poured in the West-facing windows, and Eiland blinked, sun-dazzled and muzzy-headed. It was strange to see a bed, he decided, and to see Charon in one, and to see Charon half-naked after spending so much time hiding his scarred body from sight.

  Except for how he knew all that to be a lie.

  Exhaustion finally overrode all other concerns, and Eiland stumbled over to the bed, shedding his own clothes as he went. Flopping facedown onto the down mattress, he moaned. “Bed.”

  Charon stirred, turning his head to face Eiland. His eyes were already half-closed. “Bed,” he agreed with a knowing smile.

  It was a fine bed, with a canopy and clean white sheets, but more than anything it was a bed. Eiland wanted nothing better than to fall asleep in the afternoon light, but his mind wouldn’t quite settle. He squirmed a little, finally ending up on his side facing Charon, who watched through his eyelashes.

  “How did you meet Sierrach and Mara?”

  “There’s a small trading post to the northeast,” Charon slurred. His mouth was squished against the pallet, making his lips jut at odd angles. “Just below the mountains. It’s mostly trappers and mountain people. Mara goes up there when they need supplies, and that’s how we met. I was begging. It was winter and I…I remember being so cold. Mara found me that way and brought me back here. They saved my life.”

  Eiland had no idea what to say to that, and after a while Charon turned his head away again, sighing heavily into the sheets. Staring at his matted hair, Eiland wondered what winter must be like wi
thout a home and a fire to curl next to.

  The skin of Charon’s back was pale, stretching from the waist of his breeches up to the line high on his neck where the back of his shirt would lie. There the skin turned so brown that Eiland wondered if the two tones felt different. Before the thought had even finished crossing his mind, his fingers were reaching out to brush there, back and forth across the line of skin.

  A shiver started under his fingertips and ran through Charon’s whole body. Eiland stilled, then pulled his hand back, clutching it to his chest with his other hand.

  He half expected Charon to turn his head, or roll over, but Charon didn’t move.

  “Charon,” Eiland whispered. “Charon, did you really only bring me all this way just because of the salve?”

  Charon didn’t answer, but Eiland could tell that he was not truly asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Eiland woke the sunlight had moved to a different window. He lolled about in the glorious, glorious bed for a long time, stretching his limbs in all directions like a cat. The bed was soft and clean and wonderful, but also absent of Charon. That worried at his mind until he threw back the sheets and padded out of the bedroom.

  A dusty, grand stone staircase led downstairs to a high hallway filled with two long dining tables fit for a king, or at least a minor prince. A great willow tree had been carved in the stone wall overlooking the staircase. He barely remembered stumbling past it yesterday afternoon. He must have been more tired than he’d realized.

  Voices echoed from down the hall, and Eiland followed them. In the kitchen he found Sierrach, along with a small fox. It was barely more than a kit and clearly tame. It wriggled happily at Sierrach’s feet, waiting for him to drop another bit of meat from his fingers.

  Sierrach spoke to it in a singsong voice. “Who’s Dada’s little bloodthirsty beast? Huh? Huh? Is that you? Who is the dread creature of the night, prowling through the weeds like a whisper of death? Yes, that’s you! You are the harbinger and the death-cry of gods! Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

  Eiland suppressed a snort of laughter.

  Sierrach caught sight of him in the doorway and incorporated Eiland into the narrative. “And now here is Eiland! A wandering minstrel of the Unseelie Court! Has he come to sing us songs of the Cold Lady and all her knife-knights in the Blood Feast? Has he? Has he?”

  “I’m somewhat frightened.”

  “As well you should be,” Sierrach growled in a baritone but then broke into an impish grin. “Good morrow. Are you hungry? We’ve eggs today and you’d better relish every bite. I bled for those eggs.”

  “You bled for them? Did you lay the eggs?”

  Sierrach barked a laugh. “No, don’t be silly. I braved death and dismemberment to snatch them from their mother’s beak. Come, let us devour the delicious remains of her children.”

  Eiland made a face—he never liked to think about what his food used to be—but he couldn’t bring himself to protest, especially when a plate of eggs and bread landed in front of him, accompanied by, oh, oh, gods, was that ham?

  Sierrach draped his long frame over the chair across from Eiland, his chin propped on one hand. The fox kit settled at his feet, rising only occasionally to prance eagerly in place as Sierrach narrated Eiland’s meal.

  “And the mighty Beast did fall upon the hills of wheat and eggs and did devour all he saw before him, and the people of Ham did rise up, crying, ‘Gods, why wilt thou not deliver us from the Beast, for its teeth do gnash and did it just burp, how rude—"

  “You’re mad,” Eiland gasped, struggling not to choke on his food as he laughed.

  “Mm-hm!” Sierrach clapped his hands. “Eat up, my fair minstrel of the Godless Queen! We have a salve to make.”

  The sun had already risen high in the sky when they exited the back door of the manor. Unlike the winding path to the front door, the rear entrance was much more straightforward: a dirt path led back to a brick wall and a rusted gate. On both sides of the path grew two rows of strange trees with bright red trunks and grey leaves. There were cherry trees, too, and strawberries grew along the path.

  “Did you plant all this?”

  “Some, yes. I can’t tell you a thing about it, though, Mara’s the one with the green thumb. I just dig holes where she tells me to.”

  As if on cue, Mara’s voice rose distantly from the other side of the house. Charon’s voice answered. Eiland slowed, looking toward the edge of the house. Part of him thought he should go check in with Charon, make sure he knew where Eiland was.

  It felt unsettling, being away from Charon for so long, especially after having spent almost every minute of his time in Charon’s company for the last month.

  “All right?” Sierrach inquired. “Stay close, the forest can get thick back here.”

  “Yes.” Eiland straightened and fell back in step with Sierrach’s long legs. “Lead on.”

  They passed the manor’s small cemetery, full of ivy-covered statues and wildflowers, and climbed over the rusted gate. Beyond the brick wall, the forest grew thick: if it’d been tamed by human hand at some point, the weeds had long since reclaimed their place. It was the wrong place to find gyman root, too dry by half, but hesfast flowers blossomed plentifully.

  The fox kit, which Sierrach solemnly introduced as The Great Bloody Beast, gamboled about their feet, occasionally darting away into the underbrush. She always came back, though, without being called or leashed. Clearly she knew her home.

  “You’ve lived here a long time?” Eiland guessed as they hunted for a hesfast plant.

  “Aye. Not long enough to clear out the spiders in the north corridor, I’m afraid—keep an eye out, they’ll steal your children. And you?” Sierrach asked as he pushed aside a branch. “How did you and Charon meet?”

  Eiland stumbled. He should have checked in with Charon. He had no idea what to tell Sierrach: he was the friend that Charon had supposedly brought Eiland all this way to help, but Eiland remembered the odd tension that had hung in the air last night and the way Sierrach had quickly pulled Charon aside for a private talk.

  This, Eiland realized, was exactly what Sierrach had just done with him, too.

  “Um,” he said, because he’d been silent for too long. How close were Sierrach and Charon? Close enough that Charon had confessed how he’d taken Eiland—or would Sierrach even care about something like that? How did Sierrach feel about—about men who wanted to kiss other men?

  There was little that Eiland could say about how he had met Charon that didn’t incriminate one or both of them.

  “He came to my hometown, Summerton,” Eiland finally answered. “He was looking for a healer, and my father is one of the best in the land. Charon came to our house for help, and my father showed him the salve, and it worked, so Charon asked me to come with him, to show him how the salve was made.”

  There was a pause in which only the tread of their feet on the forest floor broke the silence. Then Sierrach said in a low voice, “He asked you?”

  Eiland halted. Sierrach’s expression had darkened again. He looked almost angry. Eiland didn’t know why, so he turned and hurried onward.

  Sierrach caught up with him, but he did not ask any more questions.

  After considering several candidates they settled on a large hesfast plant that was happily growing in a glade. Sierrach produced a handheld spade with a broken shaft far too small for the task, but they dug in with their fingers and managed to ease the whole plant, its thin white roots trailing dirt, out of the ground.

  Hesfast flowers were notoriously delicate, and privately Eiland doubted whether this one would survive being transplanted to Sierrach and Mara’s garden. If Sierrach had an Agony in wintertime, though, there might be too much snow for Mara to find a plant, especially without any visible blooms to guide her.

  They picked a few more handfuls of hesfast on their way back to the manor. Sierrach seemed to have shaken off his earlier dark mood and launched into outlandish stories about
wild creatures he had encountered in these woods. Some were too fantastical to be real, but he told them with absolute conviction.

  Then, just as they sighted the manor’s roof through the branches, some large invisible animal rose and went crashing away from them in the brush. Eiland and Sierrach both froze in place. It was almost certainly a deer, but after tales of great bear-creatures that howled like dying women and banged on their doors at night, the noise set Eiland’s skin to prickling. Even The Great Bloody Beast hid behind Sierrach’s boots.

  Sierrach and Eiland looked at one another. “Perhaps we should walk a little quicker,” Sierrach whispered.

  “But quietly!”

  “But quietly.”

  They half trotted, half tiptoed back to the low wall that separated the manor grounds from the wild forest.

  As Eiland climbed over the rickety gate, he heard someone laugh and raised his head. Mara and Charon sat on the back steps of the house. Charon’s hair was wet, pushed back out of his face; it’d been cut short, still a bit longer than customary but clear of all knots and tangles. He wore different clothes, too, and judging from the upturned cuffs they belonged to Sierrach.

  Scissors rested on the steps by Mara’s hip, covered in Charon’s hair. Her hands rose and fell in the sunlight as she told her story. Charon listened, absently petting a small black cat curled up in his lap.

  As Eiland watched, Charon laughed again. His smile transformed his whole face and for a moment, just as it had on the ferry, Eiland’s breath stilled in his throat.

  “Eiland?”

  Eiland twitched back into motion. He jumped down off the top of the gate, landing with a thud on both feet, and then turned to accept the bundled-up hesfast plant and a remarkably placid Bloody Beast, which Sierrach passed to him over the top of the gate.